Polly Gillespie: A good PR job is worth its weight in ... cocaine

"Sensible" Liam Payne came to the rescue of two naughty members of One Direction.

Opinion

"How do you think the show is going?" my old boss would ask me. I may not have thrown my hands on my hips, tilted my chin back, chewed on my gum obnoxiously with an open mouth, and rolled my eyes, but internally I was doing just that as I'd reply suspiciously and defensively: "Well I don't know. How do YOU think it's going huh?"

I think when you study public relations and marketing here the first lesson they must teach is: "Never tell the talent what you think. Ask them what they think. It's jolly clever if you do!" It's not jolly clever. It's annoying.

I have two friends in publicity who use the line on me all the time. "Hi Pol. I saw you in the new TV campaign. What do you think?" or "Polly, I see in the paper they caught you drunk with your pants down on K Rd. What are your thoughts?" Generally I reply, "Stop PRing me and tell me what you think." And they do.

Some people would call it media manipulation, but publicity is a skill very few can master well. It's putting out fires and pulling flowers out of your butt while making people think the arsonist is in fact a misunderstood superhero, and the flowers smell heavenly.

I would probably do better at blind hands-free brain surgery than I would at publicity. I have no tact, no plan, no idea why I do anything, and the emotional IQ of a tree.

Last week One Direction got into a world of poop. Two of them were caught on film apparently not only smoking weed, but also apparently referencing procuring a kilo of coke. Not an ideal day for the biggest boy band or their publicity and management team. So how did they fix it? Brilliantly. They got the "nice one" - Liam - to release a casual, yet calculated, statement.

They got the strong, sensible, was-probably-head-boy and should-have-been-an-officer-at-Sandhurst one to front up (he wasn't one of the Pablo Escobar coke crew by the way) to say to the gobsmacked fans, and I paraphrase: "Gosh, sorry you guys. We're young and silly, and young, silly boys screw up. Let us forget it. Let us look forward to the bright and shiny future that lies before us!"

We all read the statement, nodded, and said, "Good call." Somewhere a very clever publicist devised a plan and extinguished a massive fire with one brilliantly deft sweep of a "send email" button.

So now two likely lads will possibly walk away with no lasting ramifications, while a gorgeous 50-year-old chef is vilified for similar allegations. That's a good PR job right there. Touche!

She probably then sent a text to Simon Cowell that read, "So how do you think that went then eh?" to which he probably replied: "I don't bloody know, how do YOU think it went?"

Polly Gillespie is the host of the breakfast show on The Hits radio station.